The central ideas of Johanna Ilvessalo exhibition are the randomness and unpredictability of life.

The flowing movement of water and its sound are the elements that dominate the space. When the light hits the water, clear crystal-like strings of pearls form. Water is part of the cycle of life, and at the same time a substance that can feel soft and hard and cold on the other hand.

“I have used water in many of my works, water that is always in motion. To me, it symbolizes continuity and the power of life.”

In Johanna Ilvessalo’s spatial works, in addition to flowing water, the central materials are glass and metal.

“I want to use glass in my work, because I think it is hard, fragile, clear and reflective, but also breakable and therefore painful. Frosted glass can also distance the viewer from the object whose contours are not clearly identifiable. Something is disappearing in the works, which can no longer be caught. Metal as a material is cold and shiny, but on the other hand, when it rusts, it shows many different layers of time.”

New works are coming to Taidehalli Häme, where clothes and their parts are part of the work.

“Found and abandoned clothes tell about a person without a person, who has nevertheless left signs of his existence. The focus is not on a person, but on his traces and the events behind them”.

Johanna Ilvessalo has long been interested in people in various situations that don’t necessarily have a beginning or an end. Situations where the viewer expects or imagines an event. Small cut moments and situations can start in the viewer’s experiences and end in the viewer’s mind.

The process and incompleteness can be seen in the Langa vrassa exhibition. We are in the continuum of time and space with the life and memories already lived.

Johanna Ilvessalo studied at Art School Maa 1986–1990, at the University of Art and Technology 1998–2002 and she graduated with a Master of Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts, sculpture department in 2012.

Ilvessalo has participated in several private and joint exhibitions since the early 1990s. Joint and group exhibitions also include international exhibitions, most recently at Tartu Art Hall in 2019. Johanna Ilvessalo has held several solo exhibitions, the most recent at Galleria Sculptor in Helsinki in 2021. The last foreign exhibition was at Tartu Art Hall in 2019 and the most recent joint exhibition was at Galleria HAA in Suomenlinna in 2022.

In 2014, he completed an outdoor work in Vilnius, Lithuania. Other of his public works can be found, for example, at Laajasalo school in Helsinki, the work was completed in 2008. He is currently preparing another public work in Vantaa’s Jokiuoma park, Martinlaakso.

Ilvessalo’s works are in the collections of the state and several foundations, cities and museums. such as in the collections of the Contemporary Art Museum Kiasma, the Espoo Museum of Modern Art EMMA and the Vantaa Art Museum Arts.

2008 Ilvessalo was awarded the William Thuring award. In 2021, he received the Helsinki Artist of the Year award.

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